Monday, March 13, 2006

Doonesbury and Doughnuts

My dad reads my blog. I’ve known this for a long time, thus ensuring that I practice the rule that I never write anything I wouldn’t want my mother to see. It’s a good safety check. Well, he must have seen my entry about my college roommate (which finally silences years of prying speculation on the part of my mother), because today’s Doonesbury reminded him that I mentioned Krispy Kreme in that post. The irony of a comic strip mocking someone for blogging about Krispy Kreme was too much for him and he e-mailed me this:

It looks like Garry Trudeau is reading you blog and stealing ideas. See today's Doonesbury.Cheers,Dad

First of all, this particular strip is a rerun. It originally ran at least a year ago. The Washington Post labels these as Doonesbury Flashback, but many papers don’t bother. I hate to spoil the suspense, but you can look forward to an entire week of Trudeau ridiculing obsessively narrowly focused bloggers. Next week: Which shotgun to use when hunting fish in a barrel with Dick Cheney.

Unfortunately, the whole joke has one important flaw that reveals Trudeau as a member of the inside-the-beltway media elite completely out of touch with the common man. The running gag for this week is Zipper Harris’s blog-obsession with the Krispy Kreme Flavor of the Month doughnut. This shows that while Garry is a comedic genius, he doesn’t know jack about Krispy Kreme.

NO ONE goes to KK for the Flavor of the Month. If you buy anything other than the Hot Original Glazed, you are being taken for a sucker. Try this as an experiment: Buy one dozen Original Glazed and one dozen Flavor of the Month. (They give a dollar off on the second dozen.) Put them both in you office break room and see which box empties first. I’d be surprised if you weren’t throwing out a few of the FoM’s at the end of the day. Only the yeast-raised dough fried and covered in liquid sugar glaze then eaten warm fulfills the true promise of the KK experience. All the other flavored doughnuts are just there for the poor people raised on Dunkin’ Donuts that think you need 32 flavors of doughnuts when really just one good one will do.

I understand that I have made Trudeau’s joke about bloggers that obsess over doughnuts a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is the sort of ironic meta-commentary I like to indulge in, even if I am the only one in on the joke. And I’m not. A technorati search will reveal over 22,000 blog posts mentioning Krispy Kreme, about four times as many as those that mention Doonesbury.

Trudeau should stick to what he knows, like the inside snark on liberal politics and left-wing culture, and leave the doughnut talk to us bloggers.

I may have to fly to Sydney now, where the only KK in the whole of Australia is located, to get me some deep fried sugar. Damn you, yellojkt!

Although as someone born and raised in New England, I do have an inbred loyality to DD. It's how you give directions, after all: "Turn left at the Dunkin Donuts on Washington, and keep going until you see the Dukin Donuts at the third set of lights..."

You're not the only one who doesn't like Krispy Kremes, Claude. Small, overpriced, and overrated in my humble opinion. Give me a Dunkin' Donut anytime. And I've learned a thing or two about doughnuts! It's the third week of the academy, right after traffic stops of hot chicks and right before activating your overhead lights because you don't feel like waiting for the red light. [Not that I've ever done those things, mind you...]